Does socialism work?

i meant its not u.s. capitalism that people support or mean when they say they prefer capitalism or communism. idk how people dont notice that its full on crony capitalism.

Ah, I know exactly what you mean. Whenever I try to tell people about the merits of communism, they're always saying "Oh yeah, what about Stalin!". But when I try to explain that my version of communism has never been tried and would be completely different from Stalinism, they always dismiss me as being 'delusional' or a 'useful idiot'.

Simply post a webpage full of links, and refuse to continue until your opponents have read every last one of them!

WORKS EVERY TIME!

"I was debating with someone who believed in climate change, when he linked me to a graph showing evidence to that effect. So I sent him a 10k word essay on the origins of Conservatism, and escaped with my dignity intact.""THANK YOU VERBOSE WEBPAGES OF QUESTIONABLE RELEVANCE!"

That's not an argument because it's irrelevant to your further points and is nothing but a personal attack.

Did it offend you that you do not have any real world experience?

You shifted goal posts. Experience or lack there of has nothing to do with anything you were talking about so im not going to get into your diversion tactics by answering that regardless of my answer. I highly doubt you work in the import and export industry anyway.

You don't get paid regardless of effort in socialism and as far as I am aware not in Venezuela's system either.

So what? Chavez tricked everyone with secret Capitalism?

You could put it that way. Basically it was an attempt at a transition period from capitalism to socialism but it never went into actual socialism it's just this weird anti-market capitalism with a welfare system. Almost ironically because their money has so little value now doing away with the money system at this point might do everyone there a favour.

Hypocrisy. Human nature.

I wouldn't call it human nature but this is exactly why many socialists and communists say that state-capitalism isn't socialism because it has a class hierarchy. In the USSR there were more wealthy elites that infiltrated the party from the very start if i recall correctly. Anyway Venezuela isn't state-capitalist either though it's that variant of Bolivarianism.

As I pointed out it was supposed to be a transition period and also Americas usually don't know what socialism or communism is so if any party in power calls themselves the socialist or communist party the US loses it's shit. The US has a tendency to attack any country like that because it sees it as an economic threat. Although it's probably a bit more complicated than that since the US also supports these countries sometimes but usually just as a strategy to go against other countries or regimes or simply for financial gain.
I don't know what to think of Chavez. I don't know everything about Venezuela. I just know a few things.
Putin is not always that easy to figure out so I don't want to get into speculating about him.

Okay. Sure bud. Let me ask you this then, what was Venezuela's plan to divest its exports? Or bypass doing business with the US?

Chávez's version of Bolivarianism, although drawing heavily from Simón Bolívar's ideals, was also drawn from the writings of Marxist historian Federico Brito Figueroa. Chávez was also influenced by the Hispanic American tradition of cooperativism early in his life,

Oh and what exactly caused the food shortage? I mean, you didn't answer that either?

They did what now?

Venezuela is the world´s tenth biggest exporter and the thirteenth largest producer of oil. Shipments of oil account for 96 percent of total exports. Main export partners are: United States (40 percent of total exports), China (11 percent) and India (6 percent). Others include: Cuba, Colombia and Brazil. This page provides - Venezuela Exports - actual values, historical data, forecast, chart, statistics, economic calendar and news. Venezuela Exports - actual data, historical chart and calendar of releases - was last updated on May of 2017.

I didn't see you ask to begin with. I already pointed out their centrally planned economy is poorly managed, so that probably has to do with it.

Grey-Zone said:You just outright ignore the human element and ASSUME that humans are good natured (in socialism). If we had that in capitalism, then cronysm would never appear in the first place and socialism has nothing to suggest that humans would "suddenly" turn into super good-hearted people. It's wishful thinking.

First off science says otherwise to what you're saying. For another as I sort of brought up to another user that socialism actually benefits the self. A persons self preservation is why people wouldn't just sit around doing nothing while they are starving to death because no one is harvesting food. That just doesnt happen. I mean come on what do you think people did before capitalism? They just sat around doing nothing? Why arent humans all dead? They work together, always have. What they are doing doesnt have to benefit themselves directly they get the social benefits of people glad they id the job. Certain jobs are looked down on in capitalism because of how little they pay even if it is a skilled job but in socialism you dont have that negative association (depends on payment methods though).

And you are replacing capitalism by capitalism with more diverse currency than only money. But the way you describe it, you still get rewarded for exactly the work you do. This might more or less work on the employee level, perhaps, but the problem is that socialism and capitalism definitly differs, at least according to the basic idea, on the "upper echelons". But it's those very "upper echelons" that decide on matters for the employees.

Capitalism isn't defined just by the money and what I listed was replacements for money not additions to it. For example community currency is a supplementary currency to use along side normal money and it actually isnt a socialist thing. Like I said it depends on the economic system used. In socialism decisions of a business are made either direct democratically via the workers or the community does or it has representational democracy where people get elected to run things and if people dislike what they do they can elect someone else. The kind where it's just worker run already exists it's called a co-op but co-ops usually dont get the same special privileges normal businesses get like bailouts or loans which is why you dont see them thrive as often in capitalist systems.

Capitalism is a top-down system, while Socialism is supposed to be, somehow, a bottom-up system, but in history this never worked out, because the "up" in bottom-up can never stabilize, as it easily gets turned into the scapegoat for every single instance of dissatisfaction. The lines between the "bottom" and "up" get blurred too much. The resulting consequence is as one can see: the "up" is most likely replaced by a very popular figure from the "bottom" who has no choice but to seize more power to not only prevent from the previous result to repeat itself, but also to fix the recent problems and emergency situations caused by the previous dispute between "bottom" and "up" and the result is even more top-down than capitalism: centrally planned economy. And due to the obivious leverage of controlling the whole economy, the power expands into areas beyond the economy... resulting in dictatorship...

In other words, paranoia of the "bottom" towards the "up" leads to replacement of the "up" with someone from the "bottom". And when the "bottom" realizes that the "up" has far too much power after all happened it's usually far too late and the new "up" has already become corrupted by the power and lost their perspective.

No there are various different structures of Socialism and your argument seems to be based on a misunderstanding on how bottom up works. A centrally planned economy is just when the government controls pricing restrictions and helps with supply to meet demand and can be in capitalism or socialism. Your argument about a dictatorship is just circular reasoning because you're just assuming it would be done in a bad way only. In capitalism you have huge corporations that rule over you for their own profit so even if you were right the same applies to a so called free market in a capitalist system. There also exists Market Socialism which is socialism but they dont centrally plan the economy and there is still competition that goes on i suppose.

@traed As I have said in the past, "in theory" socialism works, just like capitalism "in theory" should work. But most comparisons are false equivalences. You compare "theoretical socialism" to "practical capitalism". Of course, in pretty much every case, socialism will seem to be better. But frankly, scientifically speaking, the lack of a truly successful "control group" for socialism makes almost any discussion about it moot. There are limits to applying the "no true scotsman fallacy" on pretty much every instance of attempted socialism by saying "this is not true socialism" or "this is a badly managed attempt at socialism".

But I actually do agree that, since this question for a "true, properly working kind of socialism" has been up in the air for quite some time, that it's definitly worth to be put to the test. A limited experimental area where socialism is being attempted while avoiding all the common mistakes in previous "attempts" is something I'd definitly like to see myself, even while I am skeptical about the result myself, but it's definitly worth a serious try. After all everyone tries to talk big about this issue, but at the end of the day no one truly knows, whether it can actually work or not.

greenteaweasel said:It's an interesting juxtaposition to see movements for socialist leaders (like Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders) gain traction while Venezuela, a government based on socialist ideology, has pretty much collapsed.

Do you guys think socialism works or is it just a fallacy young people are consumed in?

The socialism that Bernie strives for is the "Nordic model", which seems like it does a lot of good and helps to solve many life problems for those living in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, etc. It isn't 100% socialism, but it's a mix.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model

However, this probably requires good effort and collaboration on many peoples' parts in order to work and not become like Venezuela. In the USA, there is probably too much money being spent on military for there to be funds elsewhere to help citizens with daily life, which is one of the problems Bernie was pointing out.

I'm not really sure about Venezuela, but I had a friend who lived there saying it was very dangerous, and physical piracy of video games/movies/etc was normal... and I'd read about how Venezuela has food shortages which drive people to steal from their neighbors' fruit gardens...

So I think it's important to compare the situations in Venezuela to that in the Nordic countries, to see what went wrong, why, and how can it be done successfully if it is done.

greenteaweasel said:It's an interesting juxtaposition to see movements for socialist leaders (like Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders) gain traction while Venezuela, a government based on socialist ideology, has pretty much collapsed.

Do you guys think socialism works or is it just a fallacy young people are consumed in?

The socialism that Bernie strives for is the "Nordic model", which seems like it does a lot of good and helps to solve many life problems for those living in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, etc.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model

However, this probably requires good effort and collaboration on many peoples' parts in order to work and not become like Venezuela. In the USA, there is probably too much money being spent on military for there to be funds elsewhere to help citizens with daily life, which is one of the problems Bernie was pointing out.

I'm not really sure about Venezuela, but I had a friend who lived there saying it was very dangerous, and physical piracy of video games/movies/etc was normal... and I'd read about how Venezuela has food shortages which drive people to steal from their neighbors' fruit gardens...

So I think it's important to compare the situations in Venezuela to that in the Nordic countries, to see what went wrong, why, and how can it be done successfully if it is done.

nordic contries significanly smaller & easier handle
& nordic model works bc all expected to work & contribute
very doubt wold work in usa where alredy many ppls leech to goverment bia progarms liek welfare
& nord contries dun have to spendings on gigantic military complex to ensure global security

socialism in usa wold very quickly turn to venezuela or 80's romania situaton.

nordic contries significanly smaller & easier handle
& nordic model works bc all expected to work & contribute
very doubt wold work in usa where alredy many ppls leech to goverment bia progarms liek welfare
& nord contries dun have to spendings on gigantic military complex to ensure global security

socialism in usa wold very quickly turn to venezuela or 80's romania situaton.

That's true, USA really is too big and varied.
It's possible it could work on a state-to-state basis, but only in some states... like how Vermont used to have free healthcare within that state, and how there is one college in California and New York which have free tuition now... but for the tuition in California, I think that required the help of different companies in the area to fund it, since California has been in debt and has had to lower the SSI amount for disabled people as well.

There is also the lack of medical/mental help for people (especially low-income) in USA, which ends up disabling some people who could have been rehabilitated early in life or after trauma, and better able to manage symptoms, but which becomes permanent/incurable as it grows worse, and they must depend on SSI to survive for the rest of their life...

That's not an argument because it's irrelevant to your further points and is nothing but a personal attack.

Did it offend you that you do not have any real world experience?

You shifted goal posts. Experience or lack there of has nothing to do with anything you were talking about so im not going to get into your diversion tactics by answering that regardless of my answer. I highly doubt you work in the import and export industry anyway.

I highly disagree with you there. You may see it as a personal attack but experience in the world out there means something. The only reason i do not share your mentality is exactly because of that experience threw the years. Just a few years ago i was closer to you than i am now that lived even threw more things. I don't mean just personally but seeing other people and what they faced and hearing them too.
Experience in the real world put reality into perspective. Ideals are just theories that may never work out when reality comes to the frond.

i meant its not u.s. capitalism that people support or mean when they say they prefer capitalism or communism. idk how people dont notice that its full on crony capitalism.

Ah, I know exactly what you mean. Whenever I try to tell people about the merits of communism, they're always saying "Oh yeah, what about Stalin!". But when I try to explain that my version of communism has never been tried and would be completely different from Stalinism, they always dismiss me as being 'delusional' or a 'useful idiot'.

Many countries tried communism many countries ended up in fail. have you ever considered that no matter how you dream it it just doesn't work like that due to human nature and flaws etc and your version will still end up bad because it isn't applicable in reality? But if it fails you will just say "Well it failed because they didn't implement it correctly and ended not being my version of communism".
Well guess what, that is always gonna happen because reality isn't a manual you can right to the letter and your version will always remain a dream.
Communism is usually an Utopian ideal that leads to dystopia. Because the reality of it's application isn't a book and leads to certain behaviors and mentality etc that create that dystopia.
Capitalism isn't perfect. It has the flaw of getting twisted into corporatism etc but it still at least works better than any version of communism no matter how perfect it may seem on paper.

That's not an argument because it's irrelevant to your further points and is nothing but a personal attack.

Did it offend you that you do not have any real world experience?

You shifted goal posts. Experience or lack there of has nothing to do with anything you were talking about so im not going to get into your diversion tactics by answering that regardless of my answer. I highly doubt you work in the import and export industry anyway.

I highly disagree with you there. You may see it as a personal attack but experience in the world out there means something. The only reason i do not share your mentality is exactly because of that experience threw the years. Just a few years ago i was closer to you than i am now that lived even threw more things. I don't mean just personally but seeing other people and what they faced and hearing them too.
Experience in the real world put reality into perspective. Ideals are just theories that may never work out when reality comes to the frond.

Yes. You can be the greatest leader in the word and come up with the most magnificent form of government in the world. But then you die and your successor is not nearly as capable or has different motivations and goals and it collapses almost overnight, without you.

hypocrite_tenma said:no, but I dont think thats what Sanders wants. He just wants us closer to a democracy than an oligarchy, or whatever ruled by money is called. Being closer to a democracy appears to be socialism to some people though.

But I do think capitalism works in the long run. The problem is selfish individuals that rip off consumers/selling them junk they do not need. But this isnt really capitalisms fault, it is the individual's fault. So we should just be more wary of white collar crime. But anti white collar crime =/= anti capitalism, although they usually homogenize for some reason.
Also consumers should be held accountable too. I think they complain about rich CEOs yet they keep spending money on stuff they dont need and supporting the CEOs. Why people spend so much money is a psychological issue though, I dont really know the answer to why.

the main goal of capitalism is maximizing profit while minimizing cost though so that is why its prone on making people greedy and doing cheap labor, Bernie Sanders knows that the rich gets more richer while the poor gets more poorer currently, you will hear news that only 8 rich people holds the same wealth as half of the world population and that shows that the new wealth are mostly going to the top 1% only while your middle class there in USA for example continue to decrease so there are actually more people entering poverty

The reason 8 rich people hold so much wealth worldwide is not because of capitalism but because of the national banking system that allows central banks to print money as debt with interest that other people have to pay while the stockholders of central banks get richer and richer.
Capitalism doesn't have any chapter where it demands that money are created as debt with interest.

It's really funny how naive dreamers you are about that Bernie dude or your little socialistic dreams. You fail to get reality completely. But your dreams for utopia only lead to dystopia and you fail to realize as such. His wife tried to run a university with this little socialist dreams and it went bankrupt. I kind of wish you get the big socialist you are dreaming about just to see the reality of your delusion.

ever heard of crony capitalism? lobbying? corporate welfare? its all for the interest of the rich to get more rich and its one of the main criticism of capitalism which is the rich gets richer while the poor gets poorer

google about the Panama Papers too, the rich would rather just hide their excess money instead of investing more to create high paying jobs for the people or they avoid getting tax more when in fact taxing more the rich will lead to creating more middle class consumers that is good for the economy as a whole and for the longevity of their own businesses but no they rather hide their excess wealth which came from the poor consumers to begin with

wake up, money is not unlimited and idle/excess money of the rich should go back to the greater economy to give inclusive growth

and again the reason socialist policies like universal basic income or taxing more the rich is getting more popular in the first place is because automation is increasing worldwide that it either cheapens human workers salaries more or human workers are out of job since robots/AI have overtaken their jobs

Yes capitalism can provide foundation for corporatism. The state needs to put protective measure against that but they don't and they end up getting payed by corporations to do the opposite.
Still though the fact that capitalism isn't perfect does not mean that it doesn't work better than communism because it has been proven it does.
The rich get richer and the poor poorer is not exactly true though. For example the list of the richer men in the US changes individuals quite a lot. At least under capitalism the ladder is there. You can still get rich and you can still lose everything.
This is mostly the complain of people seeing what one with money can do to make more money. Sure if you have money it's natural that you will have more ability to invest that money to make more money. That is what gives the bad impression.

But what is your proposal that people that make money should lose that money every
5 years or something? That seems fair to you?
The ladder is a ladder because you can climb it and every step makes the next step possible and that includes increasing your fortune.

If you think capitalism makes the rich richer and the poor poorer then what about communism. Instead of making everyone rich it simply makes everyone poor.
And you aren't allowed to change that unlike capitalism that you can always defy the odds and make it.
So in communism finally the poor can stop being jealous of the rich and feel good that everyone is as miserable as they are.
Basically a philosophy that satisfies the basic instinct of bringing everyone down with you. And that is what we see with many people now hating other just because they don't have ot as bad as them even thought themselves probably have it better than some others.
It didn't matter what job you had in communistic societies, this is the car you had.

Everyone fucking miserable. Do you notice the irony that even the poor in capitalism had a better car? It's just that there where others around them with even better than their own to get jealous off and because of that they felt less satisfied with what they had.

Btw, money are unlimited. Money have no real value other that the one we give them. Especially now that most of them are numbers in computers they don't even have the value of the paper they are printed on and can be as unlimited as you can imagine. What is not unlimited is recourses like land, oil, tools etc.
So if they have many computer numbers somewhere instead of having things and invest in recourses it means fucking nothing other than the influence it gives them because of the imaginary status of value we give to those that hold big numbers.

Also technology hasn't killed jobs. As many jobs as being lost to automation so many more are created in other fields like software, maintenance of automation robot hands etc.
You robot future is still quite a lot faraway right now. I have thought of that robot thing in the past too and i think i even posted it here. But are we gonna be talking about current realities or uncertain future possibilities?
Also please explain to me how exactly will we be with no government if we had robots doing everything for us. Will we also have some A.I overlord to manage things and distribute goods etc and decide things?
What will humans be doing and how exactly will goods be distributed?

That's not an argument because it's irrelevant to your further points and is nothing but a personal attack.

Did it offend you that you do not have any real world experience?

You shifted goal posts. Experience or lack there of has nothing to do with anything you were talking about so im not going to get into your diversion tactics by answering that regardless of my answer. I highly doubt you work in the import and export industry anyway.

I highly disagree with you there. You may see it as a personal attack but experience in the world out there means something. The only reason i do not share your mentality is exactly because of that experience threw the years. Just a few years ago i was closer to you than i am now that lived even threw more things. I don't mean just personally but seeing other people and what they faced and hearing them too.
Experience in the real world put reality into perspective. Ideals are just theories that may never work out when reality comes to the frond.

Yes. You can be the greatest leader in the word and come up with the most magnificent form of government in the world. But then you die and your successor is not nearly as capable or has different motivations and goals and it collapses almost overnight, without you.

Well actually that's is not exactly what i was saying. That is kind of a different thing.
I was talking about the issues overly socialist societies have when you live out there and work in them and experience them and what people around you are going threw etc.
I was also talking about how your "perfect" plan just doesn't work when you actually try to apply it because reality isn't as programmable as thought and not everyone behaves as you expected and some circumstances appear that you never thought and when you try to fix that you end up not behaving as expected also and before you know it you end up doing horrible shit to make it work at all cost because the end justifies the means and if it would just work then everything will be fine and people can go back being happy and before you know it you look back and you realize you became a monster that caused unmeasurable suffering.
That is how most communist leaders ended up doing the shit they did.

Sometimes we think this people started with the intention of being horrible but actually not. They had some ideas about how to make everything perfect etc and they actually thought it would be for the better and all that and they ended up with a dystopia by the end of it instead of the utopia they thought they were building.

If we're talking about something like Anarcho-Communism, then the answer would be "yes, but it was very short-lived." The free state of Ukraine managed to last a few years, until it was absorbed by the USSR. It would have been interesting to see what would happen if it had lasted longer.

I don't technically count the USSR or Maoist China as Communist, as they were closer to state capitalism rather than communism.

-Ouro- said:If we're talking about something like Anarcho-Communism, then the answer would be "yes, but it was very short-lived." The free state of Ukraine managed to last a few years, until it was absorbed by the USSR. It would have been interesting to see what would happen if it had lasted longer.

I don't technically count the USSR or Maoist China as Communist, as they were closer to state capitalism rather than communism.

State-capitalism. From what i have learned here, another word for socialism by using the word "capitalism" in it so we can pretend it isn't communistic socialism and accuse those capitalist guys instead.

-Ouro- said:If we're talking about something like Anarcho-Communism, then the answer would be "yes, but it was very short-lived." The free state of Ukraine managed to last a few years, until it was absorbed by the USSR. It would have been interesting to see what would happen if it had lasted longer.

I don't technically count the USSR or Maoist China as Communist, as they were closer to state capitalism rather than communism.

State-capitalism. From what i have learned here, another word for socialism by using the word "capitalism" in it so we can pretend it isn't communistic socialism and accuse those capitalist guys instead.

The USSR was mostly capitalist with communist trappings, it was just that the market was controlled solely by the state. Socialism is generally defined as something where the workers own the means of production, rather than other actors like the state or corporations. It's more of an issue of "how it was envisioned" and "how it actually turned out."

-Ouro- said:If we're talking about something like Anarcho-Communism, then the answer would be "yes, but it was very short-lived." The free state of Ukraine managed to last a few years, until it was absorbed by the USSR. It would have been interesting to see what would happen if it had lasted longer.

I don't technically count the USSR or Maoist China as Communist, as they were closer to state capitalism rather than communism.

State-capitalism. From what i have learned here, another word for socialism by using the word "capitalism" in it so we can pretend it isn't communistic socialism and accuse those capitalist guys instead.

The USSR was mostly capitalist with communist trappings, it was just that the market was controlled solely by the state. Socialism is generally defined as something where the workers own the means of production, rather than other actors like the state or corporations. It's more of an issue of "how it was envisioned" and "how it actually turned out."

Again, capitalism is about freedom of trade of individuals and business. How is state controlling everything capitalism in any shape on form. it isn't. Is communism and socialism because communism and socialism demands distribution of funds instead of profit and rewards threw the market and there needs to be someone who does the distribution and that is where the state comes in.
We called them communist for a good reason and now you guys trying to change reality with new edgy terms and interpretations is kind of ridiculous.

hypocrite_tenma said:no, but I dont think thats what Sanders wants. He just wants us closer to a democracy than an oligarchy, or whatever ruled by money is called. Being closer to a democracy appears to be socialism to some people though.

But I do think capitalism works in the long run. The problem is selfish individuals that rip off consumers/selling them junk they do not need. But this isnt really capitalisms fault, it is the individual's fault. So we should just be more wary of white collar crime. But anti white collar crime =/= anti capitalism, although they usually homogenize for some reason.
Also consumers should be held accountable too. I think they complain about rich CEOs yet they keep spending money on stuff they dont need and supporting the CEOs. Why people spend so much money is a psychological issue though, I dont really know the answer to why.

the main goal of capitalism is maximizing profit while minimizing cost though so that is why its prone on making people greedy and doing cheap labor, Bernie Sanders knows that the rich gets more richer while the poor gets more poorer currently, you will hear news that only 8 rich people holds the same wealth as half of the world population and that shows that the new wealth are mostly going to the top 1% only while your middle class there in USA for example continue to decrease so there are actually more people entering poverty

The reason 8 rich people hold so much wealth worldwide is not because of capitalism but because of the national banking system that allows central banks to print money as debt with interest that other people have to pay while the stockholders of central banks get richer and richer.
Capitalism doesn't have any chapter where it demands that money are created as debt with interest.

It's really funny how naive dreamers you are about that Bernie dude or your little socialistic dreams. You fail to get reality completely. But your dreams for utopia only lead to dystopia and you fail to realize as such. His wife tried to run a university with this little socialist dreams and it went bankrupt. I kind of wish you get the big socialist you are dreaming about just to see the reality of your delusion.

ever heard of crony capitalism? lobbying? corporate welfare? its all for the interest of the rich to get more rich and its one of the main criticism of capitalism which is the rich gets richer while the poor gets poorer

google about the Panama Papers too, the rich would rather just hide their excess money instead of investing more to create high paying jobs for the people or they avoid getting tax more when in fact taxing more the rich will lead to creating more middle class consumers that is good for the economy as a whole and for the longevity of their own businesses but no they rather hide their excess wealth which came from the poor consumers to begin with

wake up, money is not unlimited and idle/excess money of the rich should go back to the greater economy to give inclusive growth

and again the reason socialist policies like universal basic income or taxing more the rich is getting more popular in the first place is because automation is increasing worldwide that it either cheapens human workers salaries more or human workers are out of job since robots/AI have overtaken their jobs

Yes capitalism can provide foundation for corporatism. The state needs to put protective measure against that but they don't and they end up getting payed by corporations to do the opposite.
Still though the fact that capitalism isn't perfect does not mean that it doesn't work better than communism because it has been proven it does.
The rich get richer and the poor poorer is not exactly true though. For example the list of the richer men in the US changes individuals quite a lot. At least under capitalism the ladder is there. You can still get rich and you can still lose everything.
This is mostly the complain of people seeing what one with money can do to make more money. Sure if you have money it's natural that you will have more ability to invest that money to make more money. That is what gives the bad impression.

But what is your proposal that people that make money should lose that money every
5 years or something? That seems fair to you?
The ladder is a ladder because you can climb it and every step makes the next step possible and that includes increasing your fortune.

If you think capitalism makes the rich richer and the poor poorer then what about communism. Instead of making everyone rich it simply makes everyone poor.
And you aren't allowed to change that unlike capitalism that you can always defy the odds and make it.
So in communism finally the poor can stop being jealous of the rich and feel good that everyone is as miserable as they are.
Basically a philosophy that satisfies the basic instinct of bringing everyone down with you. And that is what we see with many people now hating other just because they don't have ot as bad as them even thought themselves probably have it better than some others.
It didn't matter what job you had in communistic societies, this is the car you had.

Everyone fucking miserable. Do you notice the irony that even the poor in capitalism had a better car? It's just that there where others around them with even better than their own to get jealous off and because of that they felt less satisfied with what they had.

Btw, money are unlimited. Money have no real value other that the one we give them. Especially now that most of them are numbers in computers they don't even have the value of the paper they are printed on and can be as unlimited as you can imagine. What is not unlimited is recourses like land, oil, tools etc.
So if they have many computer numbers somewhere instead of having things and invest in recourses it means fucking nothing other than the influence it gives them because of the imaginary status of value we give to those that hold big numbers.

Also technology hasn't killed jobs. As many jobs as being lost to automation so many more are created in other fields like software, maintenance of automation robot hands etc.
You robot future is still quite a lot faraway right now. I have thought of that robot thing in the past too and i think i even posted it here. But are we gonna be talking about current realities or uncertain future possibilities?
Also please explain to me how exactly will we be with no government if we had robots doing everything for us. Will we also have some A.I overlord to manage things and distribute goods etc and decide things?
What will humans be doing and how exactly will goods be distributed?

you still think future communism is like what those old pseudo-communism are

we got artificial intelligence now and yes they are still weak AI but a strong AI is in the works and once achieve it can become our new overlords yes, but what is the problem? arent conservatives and traditionalist likes to be ruled by gods or kings anyway? lol but joking aside its up to the future humanity and this super AIs to decide what will happen, but the fact is the progress of automation is inevitable

and no money is not unlimited since its tied on production or resources and as you said resources are limited/scarce, by your logic they can just print and print more money and that will only lead to hyperinflation

and there are plenty of resources in space, thats why with technological singularity the ultimate automation technology promises to even make us transhumans and become space beings if our AI overlords allows us to live that is

and here is an economic study about the effects of automation this days

A paper looking at US employment from 1997 to 2007 suggests not all jobs lost to robots are replaced

They found that each new robot added to the workforce meant the loss of between 3 and 5.6 jobs in the local commuting area﻿. Meanwhile, for each new robot added per 1,000 workers, wages in the surrounding area would fall between 0.25 and 0.5 percent.

the drop in salary is not that dramatic but the fact that salaries should become higher each decade is not happening, wages today are so low when adjusted to inflation, so consumer spending is down this days and that is one of the reason why the global economy has stagnant growth for years now

capitalism can collapse because of automation since once most humans become unemployed (including experts like doctors, scientists, engineers, inventors, etc) then you can be sure there will be drastically less consumers to no consumers

that is why again socialist policies like universal basic income, taxing more the rich and robots and even the meme fully automated luxury space communism is getting popular

-Ouro- said:If we're talking about something like Anarcho-Communism, then the answer would be "yes, but it was very short-lived." The free state of Ukraine managed to last a few years, until it was absorbed by the USSR. It would have been interesting to see what would happen if it had lasted longer.

I don't technically count the USSR or Maoist China as Communist, as they were closer to state capitalism rather than communism.

State-capitalism. From what i have learned here, another word for socialism by using the word "capitalism" in it so we can pretend it isn't communistic socialism and accuse those capitalist guys instead.

The USSR was mostly capitalist with communist trappings, it was just that the market was controlled solely by the state. Socialism is generally defined as something where the workers own the means of production, rather than other actors like the state or corporations. It's more of an issue of "how it was envisioned" and "how it actually turned out."

Again, capitalism is about freedom of trade of individuals and business. How is state controlling everything capitalism in any shape on form. it isn't. Is communism and socialism because communism and socialism demands distribution of funds instead of profit and rewards threw the market and there needs to be someone who does the distribution and that is where the state comes in.
We called them communist for a good reason and now you guys trying to change reality with new edgy terms and interpretations is kind of ridiculous.

That may be how liberal capitalism works, but ignoring the existence of state-capitalist organizations is kinda foolhardy. Even if it manifested itself in a different form, the USSR was still capitalist because it still participated in the market. Socialists argue against the very idea of the capitalist market, as they see it as inherently exploitative.

i meant its not u.s. capitalism that people support or mean when they say they prefer capitalism or communism. idk how people dont notice that its full on crony capitalism.

Ah, I know exactly what you mean. Whenever I try to tell people about the merits of communism, they're always saying "Oh yeah, what about Stalin!". But when I try to explain that my version of communism has never been tried and would be completely different from Stalinism, they always dismiss me as being 'delusional' or a 'useful idiot'.

Many countries tried communism many countries ended up in fail.

Tepid.

Monad said:have you ever considered that no matter how you dream it it just doesn't work like tha

Monad said:that is always gonna happen because reality isn't a manual you can right to the letter and your version will always remain a dream.

EUREKA!

Monad said:Communism is usually an Utopian ideal that leads to dystopia.

NO!

Monad said:Because the reality of it's application isn't a book and leads to certain behaviors and mentality etc that create that dystopia.

Well observed, but couldn't one also argue that the free market capitalism supported by Libertarians is also something that exists purely in books and would, if applied to the real world, also lead to some horrible dystopia?

It would result in Fascism.

Monad said:Capitalism isn't perfect. It has the flaw of getting twisted into corporatism etc but it still at least works better than any version of communism no matter how perfect it may seem on paper.

Simply post a webpage full of links, and refuse to continue until your opponents have read every last one of them!

WORKS EVERY TIME!

"I was debating with someone who believed in climate change, when he linked me to a graph showing evidence to that effect. So I sent him a 10k word essay on the origins of Conservatism, and escaped with my dignity intact.""THANK YOU VERBOSE WEBPAGES OF QUESTIONABLE RELEVANCE!"

Well actually that's is not exactly what i was saying. That is kind of a different thing.
I was talking about the issues overly socialist societies have when you live out there and work in them and experience them and what people around you are going threw etc.
I was also talking about how your "perfect" plan just doesn't work when you actually try to apply it because reality isn't as programmable as thought and not everyone behaves as you expected and some circumstances appear that you never thought and when you try to fix that you end up not behaving as expected also and before you know it you end up doing horrible shit to make it work at all cost because the end justifies the means and if it would just work then everything will be fine and people can go back being happy and before you know it you look back and you realize you became a monster that caused unmeasurable suffering.
That is how most communist leaders ended up doing the shit they did.

Sometimes we think this people started with the intention of being horrible but actually not. They had some ideas about how to make everything perfect etc and they actually thought it would be for the better and all that and they ended up with a dystopia by the end of it instead of the utopia they thought they were building.

Eh, close enough. Does anybody even remember Lenin? No really. Who is even the not Chavez dude currently running Venezuela?

The protesters, which for weeks have called for the release of political prisoners and the resumption of indefinitely delayed elections, clogged the streets of several cities Monday morning with a sit-in directed against Maduro.

Simply post a webpage full of links, and refuse to continue until your opponents have read every last one of them!

WORKS EVERY TIME!

"I was debating with someone who believed in climate change, when he linked me to a graph showing evidence to that effect. So I sent him a 10k word essay on the origins of Conservatism, and escaped with my dignity intact.""THANK YOU VERBOSE WEBPAGES OF QUESTIONABLE RELEVANCE!"

Simply post a webpage full of links, and refuse to continue until your opponents have read every last one of them!

WORKS EVERY TIME!

"I was debating with someone who believed in climate change, when he linked me to a graph showing evidence to that effect. So I sent him a 10k word essay on the origins of Conservatism, and escaped with my dignity intact.""THANK YOU VERBOSE WEBPAGES OF QUESTIONABLE RELEVANCE!"

Monad said:Reality is that socialism and welfare only sound good. When reality comes to the picture things never turn out so good at all.

What if I told you welfare in our countries is since ages a tool used to keep the unemployed masses afloat and avoiding a revolution? It's 100% a capitalistic way of thinking the world, not providing enough place for everyone to maintain competition between workers and salaries low. The costs are covered by small companies anyway, because big ones can afford to optimize their fiscality (read: cheat legally), so money keeps going to money.

Monad said:I highly disagree with you there. You may see it as a personal attack but experience in the world out there means something. The only reason i do not share your mentality is exactly because of that experience threw the years. Just a few years ago i was closer to you than i am now that lived even threw more things. I don't mean just personally but seeing other people and what they faced and hearing them too.
Experience in the real world put reality into perspective. Ideals are just theories that may never work out when reality comes to the frond.

No, it's because of your ignorance of how capitalism actually works and what socialism actually is. You're making a claim of superiority based on assumptions.

-Ouro- said:If we're talking about something like Anarcho-Communism, then the answer would be "yes, but it was very short-lived." The free state of Ukraine managed to last a few years, until it was absorbed by the USSR. It would have been interesting to see what would happen if it had lasted longer.

I don't technically count the USSR or Maoist China as Communist, as they were closer to state capitalism rather than communism.

State-capitalism. From what i have learned here, another word for socialism by using the word "capitalism" in it so we can pretend it isn't communistic socialism and accuse those capitalist guys instead.

Didn't I already explain in this thread what it is? State-Capitalism is a type of capitalism that is meant to be a transition into socialism.

If you asked for an apple and I handed you an apple seed would you be satisfied I handed you an apple? No because it's not an apple it's a seed that if taken care of rights grows into a tree that grows apples. Although that is not a perfect analogy because it's a failed method and there is more than one way to get to the apple.

Monad said:Again, capitalism is about freedom of trade of individuals and business. How is state controlling everything capitalism in any shape on form. it isn't. Is communism and socialism because communism and socialism demands distribution of funds instead of profit and rewards threw the market and there needs to be someone who does the distribution and that is where the state comes in.
We called them communist for a good reason and now you guys trying to change reality with new edgy terms and interpretations is kind of ridiculous.

Capitalism is when means of production is privately owned by individuals or groups in a hierarchal power structure of business that functions similar to how a dictatorship does from the top down with little to no democracy. A market is just competition of businesses as opposed to collaboration between businesses. Both capitalist and socialist countries can be for or against markets.